Went to a new location in the North Cascades for sunset this weekend. Anderson Butte is located above the east shoreline of Baker Lake and along the border of the lesser known Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness. It offers prominant views of Mount Baker, Mount Shuksan and numerous other peaks within the North Cascades.

If that wasn't enough, the huckleberries were ripe and everywhere. Phenominal place that I'll certainly be back to..

1. Watson Lakes (DA 12-24)


2. Moonrise. This is a blend of two exposures (one for foreground, one for moon) (DA 12-24)


3. Mount Baker remained mostly obscured. Here are the Black Buttes & the Squak Glacier through a break in the clouds (DA 55-300)


4. Anderson Butte (R) and Bacon Peak (L) (DA 55-300)


5. Sunset and Mount Baker (DA 12-24)


6. Last light on Mount Shuksan (DA 55-300)


7. Time to go home... (DA 18-55)


Thanks for looking...

[fccwpe]

Absolutely beautiful. My wife is from the PacNW and when I see the awesome shots like you have taken it really brings back memories. Thanks!

[Ash]

Beautiful sceneries there.
Thanks for sharing.

[flippedgazelle]

Marvelous, really beautiful images.

[heliphoto]

Those are fantastic! I love 3,4 and 6... Classic, classic stuff.

[skinja]

Nice job, I really like the last light on Shuksan. you won't have the opritunity to get up there to many more times this year.

Western Washington is a great place to be. Look forward to seeing more of your work.

John

[Jimbo]

These are all great but really love image five. JIM

[RoxnDox]

Dude!!!! #5 and 6 are truly wall-hangers. Makes me homesick all over again

Jim

[treebeard]

#5 is simply stunning. I really like the way the sun is just peeking behind that solitary tree and there is still so much detail in the shot. The others are quite nice as well.

[jct us101]

Some of these are very neat! I love the clouds.

[scole]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. #5 & 6 are probably my favorites as well.

I had a shot similar to #5 with a better composition but it was unfortunately marred by some light artifacts from scratches on my ND grad filter. I don't most people would notice it but I do so I've kept it to myself.

#5 was definately one of the harder shots to accomplish. The shot I've presented here is actually an HDR produced from a single RAW file. I did try to use the try to block out the most direct light and then used a Circular Polarizer and a 3 stop soft ND Grad filter. I was able to keep my sky for the most part but the foreground was a bit too dark to recover using just RAW file curve adjustments.

I manually created two additional exposure images using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) in Photoshop Elements and then sent the three bracketed images to Essential HDR for tone mapping.

I don't like creating HDR images so I try to avoid it as much as I can. I will use it for situations like this where I had too many issues at the time of capture to produce my final photo from the original RAW file. #5 is the only HDR photo from this bunch that I've posted. I did experiment with a couple other shots (#1 for example) but usually the overall color just seems odd, even when I dial down the Detail adjustment a lot.

Anyways, glad you enjoyed them!

[Barnster]

It looks like you picked the right time of the day for these shots.The colour is absolutely beautiful.Well done!

[daacon]

Wonderful very scenic landscapes excellent job.